Sustainable transport planning and residential segregation at the city scale

Compact city and transit-oriented development aims of integrating public transport networks with high density mixed-use development around stations and urban centers have been prominent policies for improving urban transport sustainability in many cities around the world for several decades. Although these policies have been in many respects successful for planning at the city level, there are increasing challenges in how residential housing markets have responded to thriving inner-city areas, with poorer groups potentially priced-out of inner cities to more peripheral areas with more limited public transport and active travel opportunities. Typically, suburban and ex-urban areas are car-dependent, even in cities known for extensive public transport networks. With this contextual background, this chapter examines residential socioeconomic change in Greater London, analyzing how lower income groups are increasingly being pushed to areas of poorer accessibility in Outer London because of high residential prices and housing shortages. Potential policies are reviewed to address this demographic segregation, including a major increase in affordable housing provision, and significant investment in orbital public transport services, to attempt to alter the present highly centralized pattern of regional public transport accessibility.